How Yoga Can Relieve Stress
Yoga can relieve stress in a number of ways. If you’re feeling like you’re running as fast as you can just to stand still, it’s time to tune out with the help of yoga in order to relieve your stress and get your life back in balance.
Here are a few of the ways yoga offers relief from stress:
Putting yourself first for a change.
We all have a range of demands upon our time each day, but how much time do we put aside to care for ourselves? Make an appointment on your calendar for yoga each day and treat it as seriously as a doctor’s appointment, and see what a difference it can make to your stress levels.
Peace and quiet.
Yoga studios are usually quiet place that allow you to tune out of all the media that surround you, including your cellphone, email and so on. This can help you feel a lot less frazzled.
Mindfulness and concentration
Once you have tuned out all the media surrounding you, it will be time to look within. You can improve your mindfulness by not trying to multi-task all the time. You will just be concentrating on one thing, a pose, breath work, or meditation. Better concentration means stress will not have as strong an impact upon you. The unexpected or a busy day at work will be a lot less likely to knock you off your stride.
yoga classes
Breath work
When we are stressed, we tend to hold our breath and/or breathe shallowly. Yoga breath work, known as pranayama can help you breathes better in order to clean toxins out of your body and refresh and renew body and mind. Pranayama means to move energy, so if you are feeling like a flat battery or a pressure cooker about to explode, stop letting stress get the better of you by paying attention to your breath.
Meditation
Meditation improves your mental focus and is a mini-vacation from your stress because you are looking within and starting to control the ‘mind chatter’ that most of us live with but which can be exhausting.
If you’ve been feeling so stressed lately it is hard to think straight, try yoga poses, breath work and meditation and see what a difference it can make to your body, mind and spirit.
